So, spreading his girth on this metal and cane chair, few metres away from the temple in the compound of the Nagpada police station and also certain death, the Aamdaar tries to make sense of Mumbai's gang operations. On another day and at another time, whittling past the gaily purple and yet strangely decongested Lower Parel station on Mumbai's western railway line, Fauji -- for that is how he will describe himself -- once a mill worker and now a mathadi leader, talks about the breakdown of the textile mills, of organised working life in Mumbai, of the theory of diminishing returns.At a point the two stories intertwine, reflecting the weft and weave of thefabric of this city.

The Aamdaar, so called because he once contested Assembly elections as an Independent (he lost of course), was a senior member of the Arun Gawli gang. In the gang hierarchy his designation was of a `social worker'. The job description was less ambiguous: He was to bribe lawyers, lower court magistrates, policemen, to ensure -- if not quick discharge, at least judicial rather than police custody for the boys - ``So that they were not bashed up by the cops''.

Last year he fell out with Gawli lieutenants, Sada Pawle and Vijay Tandel, both of whom were later shot dead by the police.

On the night of April 29, 1997, Aamdaar was summoned to Dagdi Chawl, Gawli's stronghold. There, he was beaten, abused and hoisted on a tree. Condemned to death by hanging. Then, as if unable to bear the injustice of this summary execution, or perhaps, not strong enough to take the weight of all that adipose, the rope around his neck snapped. ``I fell to the ground, alive and kicking,'' he exults.

Hebecame an approver. For the last one year he has been living in Nagpada police station, sleeping in corridors, whiling days with the cops. He knows that if he leaves the precinct, he will be killed. ``Gawli has put watchers on me,'' he says.

In and around Parel, Worli, Lalbaug, Kalachowki, Byculla, traditional strongholds of Gawli and Amar Naik, and once Mumbai's thriving mill district, a secret army of `watchers' scurries around, desperately seeking a way out of the decaying chawls and moss-covered skeletal remains of industry gone to seed.`The underworld taps young sons of redundant mill workers, industrial labourers,'' says the man who calls himself Fauji, a 20-year veteran in the textile mills. It begins innocuously enough. The boy may be asked to keep a watch on the movements of a particular person or a policeman, or just count the number of times a patrol van comes into a particular gully. For this, he is paid up to Rs 2,000, a handsome bonus for a family with a monthly income between Rs 800 to Rs1,000. That none of this is illegal clinches the deal.

But this is the beginning of the seduction: Once he's comfortable with the routine, befriends people and develops some vices, the gang strikes. ``We engineer his arrest, usually on a petty charge,'' says the Aamdaar. Next, the `social worker' steps in. The boy is assured that the gang leaders will protect him, and that the social worker will get him judicial remand instead of police custody. ``The poor fellows are always grateful,'' laughs the Aamdaar. Inside the jail, the indoctrination is almost complete.

``There he's well looked after, gets home food and also meets seasoned gangsters who brag about their killing, their lifestyle. When the boy comes out of prison he's asked to lie low for some time before he's given his first big assignment. This can range from passing on a weapon to assisting someone in a killing to delivering extortion threats. On the successful completion of this job he becomes a graduate, ready for a career in theunderworld,'' says the Aamdaar with chilling calm.

The other recruitment option, describes the Fauji, is to manipulate the unions to get the boys jobs either in mills that are notionally functional, or with the mathadi tolis where all they have to do by way of work is to go and collect a salary first week of every month. ``Once a boy is buried under a debt of gratitude, the gangs call for favours,'' he says.

Arun Gawli, Rama Naik, Amar Naik, all sons of textile mill workers, launched their career in this fashion and over the years abetted with the managements in the systematic criminalisation of unions like the Rashtriya Mill Mazdoor Sangathana (RMMS). The RMMS, at present headed by Sachin Ahir, nephew of Arun Gawli, has ensured that workers have to `share' even their Voluntary Retirement Scheme fund with the union. ``Our tragedy was that this so-called representative of the workers sold out to sundry managements and become almost an extension of the gangs,'' says Fauji. Probing this nexus, Murder of theMills, an independent inquiry report into Bombay's Cotton Textile Industry and its Workers, comments: ``The links between the Congress-affliliated RMMS, the underworld and the managements were revealed dramatically in May 1994 as Suneet Khatau of Khatau Mills was shot dead in a daring daylight operation. Khatau Mills was attempting to shift its operations from Byculla to Borivli and was allegedly using the Gawli gang to help convince reluctant workers that the move was in their best interest. Sachin Ahir was the RMMS representative in Khatau Mills. He was arrested under the National Security Act in Oct 1994.''

For the police, hamstrung by poor information network, the steady influx of boys with no previous criminal record has turned the underworld into a mythological monster that keeps regenerating.

While there are no exact statistics to quantify the unemployed or redundant workers who stray into crime, a study of Mumbai's economic development in the last two decades could serve as an indication.

In1976 as much as 27 per cent of the city's population was employed by the textile mills. This figure plummeted to 12.5 per cent by 1991 and has dipped to a single digit in 1998. Between 1976 and 1991, 1.33 lakh workers in the cotton textile industry were retrenched and not reabsorbed into the city's organised workforce.

``As long as the mills functioned the social life of the workers remained organised,'' says Girish Srinivasan, an economist with the Research Unit for Political Economy. ``The breakdown of that since the early '80s shattered that pattern, especially in the Parel, Lalbaug and Worli area.'' Apart from economic pressure, this breakdown led to a sense of rootlessness. ``This is particularly manifest in the children of retrenched migrant labourers,'' says criminologist, Sanobar Shekhar. ``For these second generation migrants there is no village to go back to. Mumbai is the only home they have known. So what we have is a class of people that feels deprived, existing in an urban climate ofexpressiveness that encourages to let it all hang out -- it's a lethal combination.''

The fluctuation in the unorganised sector -- 2,500 units shut down in Thane-Belapur alone in the last couple of years, sluggish real estate market and a virtual halt in the manufacturing industry has broken the back of the city's labour pool. Leaving the underworld, as happened in post-Perestroika Moscow, to emerge as one of the largest employment generators in Mumbai.